Portrait of Thomas SowellThe Vision of the Anointed

Thomas Sowell

Significantly shaped my view on economics and society.

2 books reviewed6 quotesSystems

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Table 4Economics, power & startups7 seats
NavalRavikantRobertGreeneThomasSowellNathanBarryPaulGrahamBalajiSrinivasanRonPaul

Seated at Table 4, Economics, power & startups

Seat 3 of 7. Also at the table:

  • Naval RavikantSharpened my thinking on wealth, happiness, and personal agency.
  • Robert GreeneGave interesting insights into human nature, power dynamics, and strategic influence for navigating social realities effectively.
  • Nathan BarryDemonstrated how creators can build sustainable businesses by teaching what they know and compounding in public.
  • Paul GrahamShaped my thinking on startups, writing clearly, and the value of doing things that don't scale.
  • Balaji SrinivasanExpanded my thinking on technology, network states, and how to reason about the future from first principles.
  • Ron PaulHad a strong influence in my early college years and helped me think about the Federal Reserve's impact on the regular person's life as well as foreign policy and self-determination.

Their books I’ve reviewed 2

  1. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy9/102019278 pagesKindle, Print
  2. Intellectuals and Society8.5/102010416 pagesPrint, Kindle

Their words I kept 6

The Vision of the Anointed6 quotes

"The vision of the anointed begins with entirely different premises. Here it is not the innate limitations of human beings, or the inherent limitations of resources, which create unhappiness but the fact that social institutions and social policies are not as wisely crafted as the anointed would have crafted them."

“Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.”

“To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society”.”

“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”

“One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.”

“Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.”